my musings on tech, leadership & life

This post was originally published in ACM Queue. It all started with a bug. Customers were complaining that their information was out of date on the website. They would make an update and for some reason their changes weren’t being reflected right away. Caching seemed like the obvious problem, but once we starting diving […]

This post was originally published in ACM Queue I love fresh starts. Growing up one of my favorite things was starting a new school year. From the fresh school supplies (I am still a sucker for pen and paper) to the promise of a new class of students, teachers and lessons, I couldn’t wait for […]

(This post was originally published in ACM Queue) When I first started my career as a junior engineer, I couldn’t wait to be senior. I would review our promotion guidelines and regularly assess my progress and contributions against them. Of course, at that time I didn’t really understood what being senior meant. Being a […]

Well hello!I can’t believe it is already Christmas. It feels like just yesterday I was sitting in my living room talking about how I couldn’t wait for Christmas music to start playing on the radio. The last couple months have flown by (isn’t that always the case when you are crazy busy?). So much has […]

Do you have a never-ending to do list? Are you constantly busy and feel like there is always more that you just need to do? For most of us working in technology, there is always more to do. We could always work harder and get our work done faster. We could take on extra projects […]

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been doing a lot of soul searching since selling my company. And one of the things I have been struggling to figure out is my (new) personal brand. If you are strategic you can cultivate a personal brand that can work for you. It can open […]

No matter what your profession, there are lots of reasons to take notes. You take notes to retain information from things you hear – like meetings and presentations. You take notes to capture facts or ideas (e.g., interviews, itineraries, something said in passing, etc.). You take notes to problem solve or brainstorm. You take notes […]

Wow, life is a wild ride. In March 2013 I decided to start Popforms, and in June I decided to sell the company to Safari. While it was a very difficult decision, I know it is the right thing for me. The last couple years have been hard. Bootstrapping is HARD You always hear the stories […]

Last week I launched my very first Kickstarter. The idea for this project originated from my desire for a cross between a planner and a notebook. I really wanted something with productivity systems built-in (time blocking, goal setting, and planning) but that also had space for notes. I found great “life planners” but they always […]

Update: Based on the amazing response to this post and my passion for building the perfect notebook, we launched a Kickstarter on November 20, 2014 to fund our creation of the perfect notebook. The Spark Notebook was fully funded just 14 hours after launch, and we have just kept going to see how far we can […]

about me

Kate is known as one of the top technology leaders and CTOs. Her technical background is in creating and operating large-scale web applications. Her focus has primarily rested on SaaS applications and big data. She has extensive experience building and managing high-performance teams, and considers herself a fan of agile development practices and the lean startup movement. She is currently founding her own startup, popforms, but has held roles as developer, project manager, product manager, and people manager at great companies including Amazon and Microsoft. The last seven years she has been a VP of Engineering/CTO for companies like Moz, Decide (acquired by eBay), and Delve Networks (acquired by Limelight).
Kate is a keynote speaker, and she is also the curator of the Technology and Leadership Newsletter (TLN - www.techleadershipnews.com) and has a personal blog at katemats.com.